A bunch of tricks, hacks & other cool stuff. A weblog by Merlin Mann
Introducing Instapaper 4.0 for iPad and iPhone The lede here is that my pal, Marco , has just released the stellar new 4.0 version of his Instapaper suite. This is fantastic news, and as if you needed one more of Marco s beta testers to say so I do sincerely hope you ll mark the occasion (and support his hard work) by purchasing the Instapaper iOS app(s) . I promise you ll be treating yourself to…
1. Nothing wrecks your living room decor quite like a giant, rented hospital bed. The one my Dad laid in for a couple months in the fall of 1974 was an alarmingly stiff and sturdy affair, the frame of which was forged of impossibly heavy iron, with half a dozen jaggy coats of putty-flesh latex paint doing a shit job of concealing the dings and dents kissed by dozens of clutches of burly rental…
Merlin Mann - "Scared Shitless: How I (Mostly) Learned to Love Being Afraid of Pretty Much Everything" Download MP4 Video of "Scared Shitless" This is the video of a talk I did last month at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand. It's pretty different from a lot of stuff I've done. It's about being scared . As I mentioned on Back to Work , Webstock is—what? Well. Webstock is unique. Truly. If you…
MPU 046: Workflows with Merlin Mann II « Mac Power Users Download MP3 Huffduff It I have the life that I have because I've made a lot of weird decisions, and they've worked out well. Not gonna lie to you. I'm a huge nerd. Surprised? Yep. I can recite big chunks of The Big Lebowski from memory. I can argue for an hour on the merits of Dick York over Dick Sargent . And, I can—and frequently do—catch…
So, yeah. I'll be speaking at Webstock pretty soon. Which is insanely intimidating. I think I may have my topic. ” Fear ” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 05, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 . " Why a footer? "
[ jump to video ] Long story (not very) short? One night in 2003--after killing it in front of audience of about 30 lucky people in Oakland-- The Long Winters needed a place to crash, and my wife and I were happy to oblige. So, they drove their Big Stinky Blue Van over the bridge, slept on our floor, and by breakfast the next morning, it'd become clear to me that I'd provided lodging to a man who…
[ update 2011-01-18 @ 16:07:40 : We're up! ] 5by5 Live Before Christ was a corporal, Dan Benjamin was already a bit of a hero to me. Since the early aughts long before his insanely great 5by5.tv podcast network Dan s Hivelogic Enkoder was saving us millions of spam messages. His thoughtful tutorials on OS X (including unmissable advice on doing sane installs of MySQL and Rails , among others) are…
Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be. Because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. […] Your time is…
In a classic bit from an early Seinfeld , Jerry and Elaine are at the airport, trying to pick up the rental car that Jerry had reserved. As usual, things go poorly and get awkward fast: Seinfeld - "Reservations" JERRY : I don't understand...I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation? AGENT : Yes, we do. Unfortunately, we ran out of cars. JERRY : But, the reservation keeps the car here .…
Being a Parable for the Edification of Independents Seeking Independence THE PARABLE THE OSTENSIBLE CUSTOMER enters a deli and saunters up to the counter. The deli is tended by its rakishly handsome owner, THE SANDWICH GUY . "Hi," says The Sandwich Guy. "What looks good to you today?" "Slow down," says The Ostensible Customer, as THE LUNCH RUSH starts trickling in. " Lots of delis want my…
A couple weeks ago, my pals at Twitter were kind enough to invite me in to visit with their (rapidly growing) team. The topic was meetings , so I used it as an opportunity to publicly premiere a talk I've been presenting to private clients over the past few months. I hope you'll enjoy, Broken Meetings (and how you'll fix them) . Slides : Supplementary links and commentary forthcoming, but I wanted…
It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience. —Albert Einstein, “ On the Method of Theoretical Physics ” (1934) Context : Last week, I pinched off one of my typically woolly emails in response to an…
dConstruct 2010: Merlin Mann - "Kerning, Orgasms & Those Goddamned Japanese Toothpicks" ( NSFW ) ME - Kerning, Orgasms And Those Goddamned Japanese Toothpicks on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it Let's be honest. I don't go...mmmm... places very often. I sit in this chair. I go to the Safeway with my daughter. Sometimes, I take the train downtown to get a haircut. I check the mail. But,…
On May 16, 2010, at 10:02 AM, "Xx" wrote: You mentioned you gave a talk at Rutgers about future proofing your passion. Is this available as a podcast? I'd love to listen! This poor kid emailed me to ask a really simple question. And I went and saddled him with the world's most circuitously long-winded answer. Surprise, surprise. Hey, Xx, Thanks for the note, man. No I'm sorry its not up as audio…
Video: Merlin Mann - "Time & Attention Talk (improvised)" Audio (mp3): "Merlin Mann - 'Rutgers Time & Attention Talk'" This is a talk I did at Rutgers earlier this month. I kinda like it, but for a weird reason. Something something, perfect storm of technology Ragnarok, and yadda yadda, I had to start the talk 20 minutes late with no slides. Nothing . So, I riffed. And, I ended up talking about a…